As media delivery technology matures, it has become increasingly feasible to offer a relatively large number of media items to users. Currently, for instance, many commercial systems allow the users to select from hundreds of channels. Future systems that incorporate IP-based media streaming technology and Video-on-Demand (VOD) technology are expected to offer even greater numbers of media items to users. In general, it is advantageous to provide users with a large number of items because this makes it more likely that the users will find items that match their respective interests.
However, the above-described improvements in media delivery technology also pose a number of new challenges. For instance, a user may find it time-consuming and cumbersome to search through a large number of media items to find a suitable media item. When the user selects a desired media item, the user may then wish to advance to a particular juncture in the media item, such as a particular scene in a movie. Again, a user may find it time-consuming and cumbersome to find a particular part of a selected media item. For instance, a user typically performs this task by tediously scanning forward or backward within a media item in a 2× or 3× mode of presentation.
The industry has provided a number of tools to help the user select media items, and once a media item is selected, to locate a particular part within the selected media item. For instance, some commercial providers provide an electronic program guide (EPG) having color-coded entries. That is, a commercial provider may group channels into different categories and assign different colors to respective categories. The EPG can apprise the user of the category of a channel by displaying the channel's metadata in a prescribed color or displaying the metadata over a background having the prescribed color.
As to navigation within an individual media item, digital video disk (DVD) technology commonly incorporates a grid-based scene selection mechanism. Different entries in the grid represent predefined parts of the media item, such as different predefined “chapters” within a movie. The user can advance to a desired scene of the media item by activating an associated entry within the grid.
Nevertheless, there remains room for improvement in techniques used to discover and access media content. There is specifically a need for more user-friendly and versatile techniques for discovering and accessing media items. For instance, the above-described color-coded EPG still presents a large amount of information to the user; consequently, the user may still have difficulty in visually “sifting” through this EPG information and selecting a desired media item. The above-described DVD technology's grid-based navigation technique provides some convenience in locating predetermined bookmarked content within a movie, but this technique does not otherwise accommodate the more varied and refined discovery-related needs of a user.
Similar challenges exist in other applications. For instance, many users now archive a relatively large number of digital photographs. There is a need for more effective techniques for discovering and accessing one or more photographs of interest from a larger collection of digital photographs.